Are we really bringing OCI to freaking OS builds? Nothing about OCI is pleasant. A list of Tarballs is the most backwards boot format I can think of. Terrible for reproducibility. Terrible for security.
Boot images should be Dm-verity protected EROFS images. We should not be building new things on OCI. It's really mind-blowing to me that this is a new direction people who are supposed to be top of class OS builders are moving to as a direction.
They took the CoreOS dream and threw everything in the trash
nitpick: Containerfile. I mention it because people still think container==docker. I am sure the Fedora people focus on podman, as part of the Red Hat ecosystem. For a better dev experience they offer podman-bootc¹, which you will miss when using Docker. Personally I am convinced that we should steer people to podman instead of Docker.
This is a really cool project, and IMHO the most important new-comer in the #MobileLinux distro space in a long time, as it takes a model proven on desktop, building upon a well-run distribution (Fedora) and applies it to mobile.
I have yet to attempt daily-driving it, but just trying it and easily switching mobile shells (e.g., from Plasma Mobile to Phosh) so easily[0] without have weird side-effects from the previous environment has been quite exciting!
Does anyone know if there's plans for more? Is this project in very early stages, or is it going to be another Graphene OS with an extremely limited device support?
It doesn't look like there's anything in the way of information posted that includes screenshots or what apps are included or available? Am I missing the link?
This is good to see. The concept of immutable OS and fallback boots is going to be much more common. I think there are similar concepts being explored in postmarketOS such as https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/duranium
I've tried the silverblue desktop version of this and while I'm not convinced that a mix of OS/Brew/Flatpak/Containers is making things more approachable it's interesting to see these concepts progress and the tools improve.
How well does it work on the supported devices, including for things like calls, SMS, GPS, camera, bluetooth etc? The OnePlus 6/6T is in the "community" category of supported devices for postmarketOS and (like most devices in that category) has a laundry list of issues with hardware support that either need workarounds or just don't work at the moment. Does Pocketblue have the same limitations?
Mobile Linux is a super interesting but difficult area so always good to see another effort in the space, hopefully Pocketblue and postmarketOS can benefit from each other.
It would be cool to have say debian packages or even arch packages while the base os is rock-solid in an Mobile Device while being pure Linux!
I hope more devices can be added along the way. Can the community have one cheap device and make it the standard de-facto where affordability can thus be achieved?
To me, I don't really care about specs of such phone. I just want a linux phone which can just run good enough and have such features
- Cheap to Buy
- Easy to boot Linux in
- Has calling functionalities
- 5G support (sort of optional but would be nice to have)
- Software Side: Flatpak is good enough for me with distrobox on the side. It can finally be an os where you don't need java sprinkled everywhere for it to work :D
Is there any particular phone brand which is available now for this? or can the community take such feedback and look at any such hardware and do the following and then be able to give a definitive answer to my query.
Maybe even in future, you can make a single guide for people like me who just want linux phones for affordable-pricing where I can read it and run this project!
I have been thinking more and more about using handhelds for such purpose or a rasp pi phone (there is a guy I know who is working on it) & I hope he succeeds as well.
Recently, a rasp pi laptop was launched, jeff geerling made a vid about it but because of the inflation of prices, that idea is sort of dusty right now (also with the lack of sleep mode)
So I feel like for affordable Linux phones, right now with the current AI bubble. Projects like these who can bring Stable Linux into Android phones are the best and this is a unique concept of adding atomic in Android phones which is so cool!
I really want this, I can't explain how much if it can be brought to a level which is simple. For some reason Rooting phones feels hell even though I have played/tinkered with so many os in PC's.
I wish you good luck in your project & if you have any suggestions for a cheap phone then let me know as in the future, I would love to playtest fedora atomic a lot.
I have used dumb phones a lot and to be honest the reason why I don't like SmartPhones is that I find them to be restricting & at times addicting. Its too easy to scroll youtube shorts in phone then try to create an application which is helpful unless you write it in java and just a very lack of customization. I want phones where I can develop applications in any lang I want without too much PITA. Linux is it!
Also maybe this can also be used waydroid to run android applications natively too. It would be interesting to have that possibility as well where I might still need android apps :D
To be fair while the Pinephone is quite common, it's SOC is so bad you only get opengl ES2.0 I would not blame anyone for ignoring it early on. You'd have to make sure the graphics stack works on it in particular.
18 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 44.6 ms ] threadVery similar to how Universal Blue, Bazzite, Bluefin etc. build at https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite (see their Containerfile), but for mobile.
Has a similar mission to https://postmarketos.org, but with a different build system AFAICT
Boot images should be Dm-verity protected EROFS images. We should not be building new things on OCI. It's really mind-blowing to me that this is a new direction people who are supposed to be top of class OS builders are moving to as a direction.
They took the CoreOS dream and threw everything in the trash
1. https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/bootc/getting-started/
https://github.com/bootc-dev/bootc/issues/865
I have yet to attempt daily-driving it, but just trying it and easily switching mobile shells (e.g., from Plasma Mobile to Phosh) so easily[0] without have weird side-effects from the previous environment has been quite exciting!
[0]: https://pocketblue.github.io/devices/oneplus-sdm845/#images-...
Xiaomi pad 5/6
Oneplus 6/6T
... That's it.
Does anyone know if there's plans for more? Is this project in very early stages, or is it going to be another Graphene OS with an extremely limited device support?
- only works with very few phone models
- battery doesn’t last long
- bad UI with tiny elements.
- not managing a smooth refresh rate
- no apps
That‘s the pattern we‘ve seen over and over again. The only approach that has worked better is to base things on AOSP.
I've tried the silverblue desktop version of this and while I'm not convinced that a mix of OS/Brew/Flatpak/Containers is making things more approachable it's interesting to see these concepts progress and the tools improve.
Mobile Linux is a super interesting but difficult area so always good to see another effort in the space, hopefully Pocketblue and postmarketOS can benefit from each other.
Can this run Distrobox https://distrobox.it/ ?
It would be cool to have say debian packages or even arch packages while the base os is rock-solid in an Mobile Device while being pure Linux!
I hope more devices can be added along the way. Can the community have one cheap device and make it the standard de-facto where affordability can thus be achieved?
To me, I don't really care about specs of such phone. I just want a linux phone which can just run good enough and have such features
- Cheap to Buy
- Easy to boot Linux in
- Has calling functionalities
- 5G support (sort of optional but would be nice to have)
- Software Side: Flatpak is good enough for me with distrobox on the side. It can finally be an os where you don't need java sprinkled everywhere for it to work :D
Is there any particular phone brand which is available now for this? or can the community take such feedback and look at any such hardware and do the following and then be able to give a definitive answer to my query.
Maybe even in future, you can make a single guide for people like me who just want linux phones for affordable-pricing where I can read it and run this project!
I have been thinking more and more about using handhelds for such purpose or a rasp pi phone (there is a guy I know who is working on it) & I hope he succeeds as well.
Recently, a rasp pi laptop was launched, jeff geerling made a vid about it but because of the inflation of prices, that idea is sort of dusty right now (also with the lack of sleep mode)
So I feel like for affordable Linux phones, right now with the current AI bubble. Projects like these who can bring Stable Linux into Android phones are the best and this is a unique concept of adding atomic in Android phones which is so cool!
I really want this, I can't explain how much if it can be brought to a level which is simple. For some reason Rooting phones feels hell even though I have played/tinkered with so many os in PC's.
I wish you good luck in your project & if you have any suggestions for a cheap phone then let me know as in the future, I would love to playtest fedora atomic a lot.
I have used dumb phones a lot and to be honest the reason why I don't like SmartPhones is that I find them to be restricting & at times addicting. Its too easy to scroll youtube shorts in phone then try to create an application which is helpful unless you write it in java and just a very lack of customization. I want phones where I can develop applications in any lang I want without too much PITA. Linux is it!
Also maybe this can also be used waydroid to run android applications natively too. It would be interesting to have that possibility as well where I might still need android apps :D
My eyes are currently on the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3 as it seems to tick most boxes on PMOS' compatibility matrix.
Anyway, Fedora is sooo good. :D
Written on a Pinephone.